


Ursa Minor

by korik



Series: A Dissertation in Memories [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Comfort, Couch Cuddles, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Mush, Gen, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, aftermath of catws, not sure if romantic, semi time skip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 16:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1556408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/korik/pseuds/korik
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He has a nickname, this is one side of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ursa Minor

His voice is small, but it reverberates into her collarbone. "I feel like a bear; I just want to curl up - " he hesitates.

She fills in, brushing her lips over his forehead, eyes closing after one last gaze at the shorn head. "Hibernate," a pause for an inhale, her lips twisting into delicate feelings. "So small, warm, safe - no one to wake you, no one to find you, just sleep."

There is a shift and creak, he uncurling with shaky fingers in her grasp. "Y-yeah."

He nuzzles back again, the underside of her jaw nestled comfortably across the space between his eyes, where his nose begins, winding her up tight into his grasp as she teases the fallen blanket with careful maneuvers of her toes and limbs to embalm them in the dark.

"Nat?"

She has to hold her breath to hear him over her heartbeat. "James."

"I'm scared."

She knows the response, what she had always wanted to hear and there had been no one there at the time except walls and tangled sounds of _too much everything_ that could not be denied as the artificial walls cracked and left her bare for the world's perusal. "I won't leave you."

The words come out in a rush against her skin - "I nearly left you, Natalia, but I don't have anywhere else to go, no one else who knows me - I'm, I'm not a good person - "

"No but - "

" - you're the only one who knows that." His great, luminous eyes stare into hers, filled to the brim with an emotion she knows well.

The smile is a knee jerk response, but it is to keep her from crying at his helplessness, the familiarity, the wanting to know but not knowing if it was the best idea. It is to be strong when he has no strength of his own. "I know what you can do, what you could slip back to; I'm not afraid, it's not my business to be unaware." Her tired fingers at the back of his neck play with the stiff hairs she has helped create. "I will take that shot."

His face disappears again into the embrace she offers him, and she feels his body relax, hard edges softening. "Thank you."


End file.
